Maria Leonor Simões dos Santos Intercompreensão, aprendizagem ...

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abstract
Intercomprehension, Plurilingual Competence, Languages Teaching and
Learning, Plurilingualism Didactics
This study, framed in the scientific domain of Language Didactics, which has
focused on the education in and for plurilingualism in the last years, aims to
contribute to the clarification of a concept that has been valued in the field: the
concept of Intercomprehension (and its connections with the language teaching
and learning process).
Inspired by the theoretical and practical development of several European
projects built around this notion, we conceived a didactical intervention project
(Plurilingual Project) aiming: i) to understand how to work Plurilingualism and
Intercomprehension as formative aims, in the context of a specific language
learning subject integrated in the Portuguese school curriculum (a Latin class in
the Secondary School); ii) to illuminate different understandings about
“intercomprehension” found in the reviewed literature, through the analysis of
the processes involved in the comprehension of unknown verbal data activities
proposed to a real school public.
The analysis of the collected data on the formative potentialities of the
integration of a plurilingual approach in the language classroom shows that it is
possible, in the school context, to enrich the curricular work with the plurilingual
approach thus contributing: i) to the development of students’ Plurilingual
Competence, as well as other competences related to the processes of
interaction and learning of different languages; ii) to the education of individuals
capable to participate successfully in situations of interaction with other
individuals or unknown verbal data, through a process of co-construction of
meanings that realizes the notion of Intercomprehension as we understand it.